Building Alliances with African-American Communities

The resurgent labor movement’s organizing efforts in recent years among very low-income immigrant workers have been groundbreaking, and have succeeded in connecting with immigrant social movements, but they risk provoking a backlash if they do not intentionally link with African-American and working-class white communities.  GANE has made real progress over the past year in forging alliances between African-American communities, immigrant communities, and labor unions, alliances that form a foundation of support for union organizing efforts in the region for years to come.

After years of being shut out of good jobs in the American industrial economy, the struggles of the civil rights movement finally produced meaningful gains: in 1970, for example, African-Americans made up 20% of the members of the United Auto Workers.  In the three decades that followed, however, the American manufacturing industry imploded, with African-American workers the first casualties.  In other industries as well, African-Americans gained access just as the forces of deregulation and globalization were making many jobs no longer jobs worth having.   

In the 1990s, an enormous wave of immigrants collided with this mutating economy and ended up in competition with U.S. born workers, particularly African-Americans, for fewer and fewer viable work opportunities.

The result has been deep-seated conflict between African-Americans and immigrants.  African-Americans often see vulnerable immigrant workers as a cause of eroding wages.  As immigrants have grown in numbers and in political power, many African-Americans have come to see immigrants as a political as well as an economic threat.

The long history of white supremacy across the globe further complicates any effort to resolve tensions.  Many Latino immigrants bring a deep-seated racism against people of African descent when they migrate to the United States.   

In this context, union or community organizing that focuses solely on immigrants will never gain widespread political support, and is likely to generate resentment. 

GANE is building a foundation of shared trust between African-American communities, immigrant communities, and labor unions.  In northern New Jersey, where work that does not pay is so often done by immigrants, this foundation will be critical to the success of any campaign to support union efforts to win living wage jobs and rights at work.

Using the Center for Community Change’s model for establishing dialogue between African-American and immigrant communities, GANE and our partner organization New Labor held a series of dialogues this fall and winter.  The first, for African-American workers, was moderated by veteran facilitator Bernard Moore of UNITE HERE and by Gerald Lenoir from the Black Alliance for Just Immigration in Oakland, who has led discussions in forums around the country on the relationship between African-Americans and immigrants.  The second, for immigrant day laborers, was facilitated by Mayron Payes of the Center for Community Change.  The third, moderated by Moore, brought together African-American and immigrant workers who had participated in the previous sessions and who were being trained to work together on GANE’s pilot weatherization project (see below).  Through this work, we are developing a group of leaders who know and trust each other, who share an analysis of the history of African-American and immigrant communities in northern New Jersey, the issues both groups face, and who have a common vision of the change that is needed to bring genuine opportunities for both groups to prosper.